Political Legitimacy as an Existential Predicament

• Author: Thomas Fossen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917211047842
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917211047842

Political Theory

2022, Vol. 50(4) 621 –645

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917211047842

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Article

Political Legitimacy as an

Existential Predicament

Thomas Fossen1

Abstract

This essay contributes to developing a new approach to political legitimacy by

asking what is involved in judging the legitimacy of a regime from a practical

point of view. It is focused on one aspect of this question: the role of identity

in such judgment. I examine three ways of understanding the significance of

identity for political legitimacy: the foundational, associative, and agonistic

picture. Neither view, I claim, persuasively captures the dilemmas of

judgment in the face of disagreement and uncertainty about who “I” am and

who “we” are. I then propose a composite, pragmatic picture. This view

casts the question of political legitimacy as an existential predicament: it is

fundamentally a question about who you are—both as a person and as a

member of collectives. The pragmatic picture integrates rational, prudential,

and ethical qualities of good judgment that were heretofore associated with

mutually exclusive ways of theorizing legitimacy. It also implies that the

question of legitimacy cannot be resolved philosophically.

Keywords

political judgment, political legitimacy, political identity, pragmatism, agonism

Introduction

“The people demand the fall of the regime,” crowds chanted at Tahrir Square

in Cairo in early 2011. The call makes forcefully clear what was at stake:

beyond discontent about a particular leader, law, or policy, this was a struggle

1Assistant professor of political philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Leiden University, Leiden,

Netherlands

Corresponding Author:

Thomas Fossen, Institute of Philosophy, Leiden University, PO Box 9515, Leiden, 2300 RA,

Netherlands.

Email: t.fossen@phil.leidenuniv.nl

1047842PTXXXX10.1177/00905917211047842Political TheoryFossen

research-article2021

622 Political Theory 50(4)

about the legitimacy of the regime as such, touching on the foundations of

political order. This question of legitimacy becomes viscerally pressing at

critical moments, when a regime’s survival is at stake. Yet even where a

regime is well established and generally accepted, the question of its legiti-

macy can be raised, and is answered continually in day-to-day practice, if

only implicitly. We all find ourselves confronted by authorities that purport to

rule us. Whether we comply wholeheartedly, engage in resistance, or try to

ignore them as much as possible, we inevitably comport ourselves toward the

powers that be in one way or another. Thus anyone confronted by power also

faces a predicament: what practical stance shall I take toward the authorities?

Is their claim to rule legitimate?

Philosophers usually approach this as a problem of moral knowledge,

seeking to articulate and justify principles that the authorities ought to meet

to be legitimate (e.g., Applbaum 2019; Peter 2020). Realist critics regard

such moralism as out of touch with political reality. Those who propose con-

structive alternatives typically search for criteria that are in some sense dis-

tinctively “political” (e.g., Sleat 2014; Cozzaglio and Greene 2019). Either

way, the theorist is engaged in a codification project (Fossen, forthcoming).

Someone confronted by power could then presumably apply such standards

to judge the legitimacy of the regime they are facing. Yet despite the best

efforts, criteria of legitimacy remain subject to profound disagreement and

uncertainty. Of course, the persistence of disagreement does not entail that

there is no correct theory. But perhaps it ought to give us pause to ask whether

the quest for a theoretical resolution departs from an adequate diagnosis of

the problem.

This essay approaches the problem from a different angle by shifting focus

from the content and justification of principles (whether “moral” or “politi-

cal”) to the activity of judging legitimacy in practice. By judging legitimacy,

I mean distinguishing, from a practical standpoint, whether the regime with

which one finds oneself confronted is legitimate or merely purports to be so.

Instead of asking, in the abstract, what makes authorities legitimate or illegiti-

mate, we take a step back to inquire what it is we are doing in distinguishing

whether a regime is legitimate or illegitimate, and what it takes to do this

well. How does the question of legitimacy manifest itself in practice, from a

first-person perspective? What can one do, and what must one know, in order

to aptly respond to this question?

This essay does not take on that task in full, but zooms in on one dimen-

sion of this problem: the role of identity in judging the legitimacy of a regime.

Among the many protesters who filled Tahrir Square on the eve of President

Mubarak’s fall was a man with a sign around his neck that read: “I used to be

afraid, now I am Egyptian” (Gribbon and Hawas 2012, 109). Evidently, over-

coming his fear and speaking out against the regime were part of what

Egyptianhood meant for this man. He was far from alone. In a video that went